Wireless telecommunications is the technology upon which cellular telephones and many other commonly used mobile communications and computing devices are based. This technology has undergone rapidly advancements in recent years and has been adopted worldwide with unprecedented speed. Cellular telephony in particular has the benefit of allowing people to communicate with each other from virtually any location. However, this technology is also increasingly impinging upon users' privacy.
In the past, one could escape the often-intrusive ring of the telephone simply by leaving one's home or the office. Driving in one's car was sometimes a welcome (albeit short-lived) escape from the telephone. Now, however, as people carry their cellular telephones with them almost everywhere they go, they can be reached at virtually any time and in virtually any place by anyone who has their mobile telephone number. More and more commonly, the caller is unknown to the user or may not be someone with whom the user wishes to speak. Thus, for many users, the greater accessibility which a cellular telephone provides also threatens to make the device a nuisance.
To mitigate this effect, many newer-generation cellular telephones have display screens and are equipped to receive and display information provided by a caller identification service (“Caller-ID”, also known as Calling Number Identification, or “CNID”). Currently there are two types of Caller-ID services for wireless devices. The first (often referred to as “basic” service) only returns the calling number or an error message and the date/time of the call. The second (“enhanced” Caller-ID) also may return the directory information about the calling number. At a minimum, the name of the subscriber is returned. The subscriber is not necessarily the same as the caller, however; the telephone company has no way to determine who is actually on the line.
It is often inconvenient, however, for the user to have to look at the display screen, and it may be quite hazardous to do so if, for example, the user is driving an automobile. Furthermore, the Caller-ID information sometimes includes the telephone number of the caller but not the caller's name, as noted above. In such cases, if the user has a large number of personal contacts or a poor memory, the user may not recognize the telephone number, even though the caller may be someone with whom the user would like to speak. Accordingly, a better solution to the problem of identifying callers on mobile telephones is needed.